SAS CEO: European Airlines Desperately Need Consolidation

25.08.2023 - 14:05 / skift.com / Rafat Ali / Airlines

Anko van der Werff has a thing for airline bankruptcies. Either they follow him or he follows them. All of the three previous airlines he has worked for and led, Aeromexico as CCO, and as CEOs of Avianca and now SAS have gone through their rites of passage after he joined or after he left. And he relishes his role as tthye sharp but genial turnaround artist.

With SAS, which he joined as CEO in July 2021 in the throes of covid challenges, 2022 was even tougher as the company dealt with pilot and labor strikes and summer travel chaos, resulting in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing in the U.S. courts. Now in 2023, Anko expects to come out of bankruptcy in the second half of the year and much better year and earnings ahead.

Earlier this month as he was on a whirlwind tour of New York City to launch the new JFK to Copenhagen fight, I interviewed him about the path ahead for him and the airline he leads.

Rafat Ali: Why did you end up in bankruptcy protection?

Anko Van der Werff: There are many reasons why we ended up in Chapter 11, because my first year was Delta variants, then Omicron, then Russian airspace. Every single time we thought “Okay, now we can really start to ramp up again”, something really massive happened, and you were just with your back against the wall every single time. And Russian airspace, certainly on wide bodies, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. So that piece is now restructured. Like I said, billion Swedish kronor of annual savings.

Ali: Any plans for Asia anytime soon?

Van der Werff: Asia is really the anomaly because being so high up in northern Europe, we are far more hit by Russian AirSpace closure than anyone else in Europe is. So our one-way, elapsed time increases delta, versus overflying Russia is about two and a half hours one-way. So two and a half hours of one-way additional flying, as I was explaining because it’s not just fuel costs cost, but it’s your crew, your pilots your asset. I mean, the whole aircraft is now away from home. Your rotation is now five hours longer, so it doesn’t fit anymore. And look. When is it going to open up again? Who knows, but certainly not tomorrow. Next month? It just won’t.

Asia definitely will feature in the long-term, medium long-term plans, but we will keep the footprint and keep something open. Shanghai, at least as of this year. But to go massively back into Asia at this moment really wouldn’t make any sense.

Ali: So in terms of between now and when you come out of Chapter 11, which you mentioned being the second half of the year, you’re launching these new routes in the U.S. What more before you come out of the bankruptcy?

Van der Werff: Yeah. So we signed a Debtor-in-Possession financing, DIP financing back in